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Thursday
January 24, 2008
Israel loses the PR war
The Gaza Siege must end!
Canada's national newspaper, the Globe
and Mail, has been decidedly pro-Israel for quite some time,
but in reporting on the Gaza exodus into Egypt it has said something
entirely revealing about the Israeli military's inhumane treatment of
Palestinian civilians:
For
some, it was the first time in their lives they'd been able to leave
the crowded confines of Gaza, a tiny coastal territory that has been
under some form of Israeli control for more than four decades.
(Underlining mine)
Gaza is 40
by 10 kilometers (25 by 6 miles). Spiegel
Online says it flat out - they are "living in one big prison".
And their crime was that they happened to be living in a space Israel
wanted for Jews alone.
What
can the Globe possibly say on Israel's behalf from here on
in. It's utterly clear that the occupation must end.
Ah yes, the rockets. For seven years, they have mostly caused property
damage in a settlement called Sderot, and severe nervous tension.
Its residents feel abandoned
by their government; they feel they should be financially compensated
and evacuated. Instead, Israel doesn't take the rockets seriously
but uses them publicly as an excuse to terrorize, slaughter and destroy
on a grand scale in Gaza, hoping against hope that the Palestinians
will give up and become refugees in some other country.
Too often, those who rise to positions of power don't mind sacrificing
the people they claim to serve in order that they themselves might save
face as strategists. Eventually, all of those leader types become
hoist on their own youknowwhats, but the people on both sides always
pay the biggest price.
Seven years is all it took to make the residents of Sderot give up; but
40 years of occupation has hardened the resolve of most Palestinians.
Killing is never a solution, as we are finding out in Iraq and
Afghanistan. War does not bring peace. Only an outright and
sincere declaration of truce and retreat from militant positions can
offer the chance of improvement.
Nevertheless, here are the official Israeli
statistics on the widely publicized suicide attacks from 2000 to
2006, showing the number of deaths and injuries they caused, which
while horrendous indeed are still much lower in numbers compared to the
ongoing slaughters and injuries of Palestinians carried out on
an almost daily basis by the Israeli military.
Something to note is that the number of suicide attacks began to
escalate at the height of overwhelming disappoinment and morbid
pessimism in Palestinian youth as a result of the failure of the
excitedly anticipated Oslo accords to translate into any improvement
for Palestinians - and had dropped off to vrtually nothing before
Israel's wall was constructed.
So Israel's own charts show that the wall is essentially a land grab,
not a barrier against suicide attacks.
Israel's expansion goals were greatly assisted by the fact of 911 and
the designation by the US (and Canada) of certain Arab/Palestinian
groups as "terrorist". Now they could do as they wished under the guise
of fighting the "war on terror".
But There
is no War on Terror (thanks to Marjorie for the link
to this highly definitive article), only unending wars of attrition
for selfish purposes using terrorism as an excuse - and the world is
beginning to wake up to that.
The jig is up. It's time for Israel to give up the stranglehold on
Gaza, get
its people out of the West Bank, concede the appropriate half of
Jerusalem to a contiguous Palestinian state, and stop trying to dictate
who can and who can't go back home.
Unless saving face is all that matters, and human lives bedamned.
If so, then we're all damned if we remain silent.
See
Blog 2: Montrealers have already spoken out.
Check out the YYC Comments
section for announcement of upcoming worldwide vigils.
BBC:
Viewpoints from Sderot and Rafah
Reuters:
Israel wants to cut Gaza links after border breach
YYC: Because Israel wants no state for
Palestine. It wants control to go to Egypt for Gaza, and to
Jordan for the West Bank.
yayacanada
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